They’ve set up home on the sand island. Meili has reared almost thirty ducks, and Kongzi has bought two egg-laying hens and a rooster which he keeps in the bamboo cage. When he isn’t hauling cargos of smuggled or fake goods, he scours the town and rubbish dump for junk he can sell. There are twelve other families living on the island, most of them fellow family planning fugitives.
Meili dips a flannel into the river and rubs it over her face and body, flinching from the cold. Their neighbours Xixi and Chen are about to sail over to the town. They were the first family to arrive on the island. Last year, the river police pulled down all the shacks, but the islanders soon built themselves new ones with tarpaulin and wooden planks scavenged from the dump. A strong sense of community has formed among the families. Everyone rears chickens and ducks, so the air is always filled with the scent of roast meat.
‘Want a lift, Meili?’ Chen calls out. Meili says yes, but quickly changes her mind. ‘No, if a big crowd has gathered to watch the man jump, the town will be swarming with police. I don’t want to get dragged off to a family planning clinic and have some stranger push an IUD inside me.’ Meili has developed a fear of crowds, and has only visited the town three times.
‘Stop worrying,’ Kongzi says. ‘I told you, the head of the County Family Planning Commission is a reasonable man. We wouldn’t be allowed to stay on this island otherwise. You go into town, and take Nannan with you.’ Kongzi picks up lots of local information from other scavengers on the rubbish dump. Last week, he was told that a professor from Guangxi University was giving a lecture on Neo-Confucianism and Modernity at the County Cultural Palace, which he made a special effort to attend.
‘No, I won’t take Nannan,’ Meili says, stepping onto Xixi and Chen’s boat. ‘There might be child snatchers in the crowd.’
‘But those gangs only snatch boys,’ Kongzi says.
‘I don’t care. You look after her.’
Once the boat pulls away, Kongzi wades into the river and feeds yesterday’s leftover noodles to the chickens in the cage.
Up in the centre of town, after walking past the covered market and newly built Eastern Sauna House, Meili sees a large crowd staring up at a construction worker who’s threatening to jump from the top of a half-finished office block. When he waves his hands about he reminds her of an old school friend who now works for the governor of Nuwa County. Anxious to escape the crowd, she skirts its perimeter and enters a wide, empty street. In the clear morning light, the family planning banners strung overhead appear even larger. One side of the street has been recently covered with cement; the other side remains potted with holes. She walks on, following smells of dough sticks and fried dumplings which lead her to a small food stall outside a restaurant with blue-glass windows.
Meili buys three dough sticks. Unable to resist, she opens the newspaper wrapping straight away and bites into one. Delicious. She sits on the restaurant’s concrete step and reads the slogan daubed on the opposite wall: ANY PERSON FOUND TO HAVE EVADED MANDATORY STERILISATION WILL BE ARRESTED AND FINED. For the first time since the abortion, she is able to read this familiar slogan without her stomach knotting with fear.
She studies the blank expressions of the people passing by on their way to work, and feels frustrated. She too would like to stroll to work every day wearing a smart dress, shiny leather shoes, holding a handbag containing a hairbrush and make-up. But peasants are banned from entering tall office buildings which are warmed in winter and cooled in summer, and where staff are paid high salaries for sitting at their desks all day. Although Meili was born into a peasant family, she longs to live like the rich women in television dramas who own air-conditioned flats and air-conditioned cars and never have to set foot in a field. Once she has joined their ranks, she too will dress herself in a tailored suit, paint her nails red, fasten elegant sandals to her feet and stride into an air-conditioned jet or the carpeted foyer of a luxury hotel. She may be inadequately educated, but she has confidence and determination. She is able, after all, to perform a song in